 Family Bullying Of Women In India Explored In Novel "A List of Offences" By Author Dilruba Z. AraA "List of Offences," new novel by Bengali / Swedish author Dilruba Z. Ara, shines spotlight on ‘family bullying’ of women on Indian Subcontinent
Meanwhile, Mizan, an orphan boy, is stranded by the river after a flood. Daria’s parents shelter him, but off stage a servant of the family mistreats him. Because he can read and write, Mizan’s only recourse is to make a secret list of the mistreatments, which he titles “A List of Offences.” However, Daria’s father, who also fears that village gossip will follow Daria to her future in-laws’ family, plans to save her from her inauspicious destiny by marrying her off with Mizan. But Daria falls in love with handsome lawyer Ali Baba and marries him. Leaving her village for the city and her husband’s home, she finds that his mother is obsessively bitter that he has married a country bumpkin. Daria forces herself to put up with her new family, for as a married woman she no longer belongs to her parental family. Both pride and fear of angering her own mother keep her silent for a long time, until she herself begins to make her own personal “List of Offences” and becomes a mother herself. “I think what inspired 'A List of Offences' is that I have seen how girls are raised and treated,” explains author Dilruba Z. Ara. “In Third World countries you can see a pattern where girls always have to fight for their rights – even within the family. They are told to keep quiet: you do not talk about things that might signal you out as an unsuitable girl in your social orbit; even if you’ve been raped you hide that. In the book, Daria’s story is only a micro version of the macro thing that has been happening within families… home has been the center of repression for girls for ages.” Ara adds that there is a double irony in these situations: “Politically, they’ve been suppressed by the men, and strangely enough, also by elderly women. These elderly women were themselves abused as younger women; yet, when they get older and are empowered with motherhood and as caretakers of families they align themselves with men who normally represent power and embrace the age-old-pattern where bullying the younger women is acknowledged! "A List of Offences," Ara’s first novel, was originally published in 2006 in Dhaka, Bangladesh by University Press Limited, a leading publishing house. Translation rights were sold to Spain in Greece and were in print in 2008. The Spanish translation was a bestseller in parts of South America, and the Greek version made a huge impact in Greece, where Ara was hosted in several media and at the Book Fair in 2008. Although the English-language version has been available only in Dhaka, it has been reviewed in several countries and studied at various universities. Ara is also the author of many short stories, published to great acclaim in many international anthologies and used as course material in universities around the world. Ara attributes her passion for women’s rights to her late father, Shahed Ali, a renowned Bengali author who wrote about women’s issues. “He taught me to be alert to familial things. Even though this book is about Indian/Bengali culture, it’s about how you can subdue someone in your family if you have the power– it’s family bullying. My Swedish friends recognize it even in their families. In Spain, the book has initiated an online forum about family bullying. One Indian reader told me that my book gave her the courage to get out of a dysfunctional marriage after forty years of suffering.” ABOUT AUTHOR DILRUBA Z. ARA Dilruba Z. Ara was born in Bangladesh. Nurtured on Greek mythology by her father, and hearing Indian fairytales as bedtime stories from her mother, Dilruba had her first story published when she was eight years old. While in university at the age of twenty, she met and married her husband, a Swedish Air Force officer, and moved to Sweden, where she obtained degrees in English, Swedish, Classical Arabic and linguistics. She now teaches Swedish and English in Sweden. An accomplished, exhibited artist, her paintings have been used as the covers for the Bangladeshi, Greek, and U.S. editions of "A List of Offences". More information on this book can be accessed at http://www.dilrubazara.com A List of Offences 380 page paperback, $14.95; ISBN: 978-1-47748- Published by Chamon Publishing House (March, 2013) Available at amazon.com Website: http://www.dilrubazara.com Photos: https://www.prlog.org/ https://www.prlog.org/ End
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